What is challenging about working cross-culturally in a virtual setting is the amount of time needed for a translation of a discussion, language barrier, and time differences. When one of the discussions was going on I was trying to understand what was going on really hard. It was really difficult due to the fact that the speaker  was speaking Portuguese. iMessage someone in the chat to help explain what was going on and it helps me understand better. They took a lot of time translating what was going on in the chat and it got very confusing. Then after some meetings we plan on going on zoom to meet up and talk about our project or meet with Skip but it’s very hard because of all of our different time zones along with the busy schedules. But there are positives, such as you get to talk to someone from a different country very easily and have such easy access to them because it’s online. You don’t have to worry about having to fly somewhere or anything but because it’s online it’s very nice to see a glimpse into their life and how they are.

I build trust with my teammates and clients when they are not from my home culture by bonding over common interests. I feel that by talking first even though it may be time consuming, I have slowly learned to start by getting to know the other person and sharing common interests makes business a lot more comfortable. For example, the many different exercises that we did in class by presenting slides, helped build trust a lot. Also us assigning each other different tasks and watching everyone follow through with it help with trust and help me know that I can rely on my teammates to fall through with their responsibilities. For example, I was busy today and had a surgery consultation so someone had to go and meet with Skip because I cannot be there and Andres did so it  helped me know that I could rely on him and trust him. Furthermore, how I would get a client to trust me from a different culture is just by finding common interests and similar things that we look for in business. 

As an individual on a team I am prioritizing expressing my recommendations during the advocacy phase By communicating with my teammates while we meet on my opinions  and my viewpoints. For example, I’ve had opinions About my concerns of professionalism and professional language in our business flow chart as well as some of our written plans.I have helped express my concerns. It’s definitely a democracy and it’s not hard to get my voice out there and share my concerns and my recommendations.